Chance and Change by William Drury, edited by J. Anderson, University of
California, 拢19.95, ISBN 0520211553
LIFELONG twitcher William Drury鈥檚 final book, Chance and Change, is
designed to annoy those conservationists wedded to romantic notions of nature鈥檚
grand design. And by using anecdotes from his birding days, Drury also produced
a fascinating commonsense critique of ecological theory. His main message is to
use your eyes more.
It seems such an obvious thing to do, but as biologist Ernst Mayr鈥檚
introduction points out, the formulaic models provided by scientists in the
1940s and 1950s, when Drury began his career, led to something akin to
鈥減hysics-envy鈥� among biologists. Drury, a trained botanist, geologist and
zoologist, felt such approaches demeaned biology by taking it out of the field
he loved so much into the overly tidy world of mathematics. He made delightful
mockery of this position with an anecdote where his botany professor is
painstakingly searching a hillside for a 鈥渢ypical鈥� plant.
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His best sections included an attack on the idea of natural balance. Drury
considered ecosystems to be largely temporary constructs so seeing most species
in a community as superfluous to the operation of those sets of species between
which we can clearly identify important interactions. 鈥淚ndividuals and species
do not benefit, 鈥渉e claimed, 鈥渁s much by becoming integrated into a function
system as they do by maintaining options of disengagement so that they can crop
excesses in the good times and move out during a crunch.鈥�
However, the example Drury highlighted鈥攖he deliberate removal of gulls
at Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge, Maine, to increase the number of
nesting pairs of terns鈥攈as difficult connotations for those
conservationists who see 鈥渁ssisted鈥� natural selection as akin to playing
god.
But Drury reckoned that if humans don鈥檛 play god, something else will, for
instance, the gulls whose bloody tactics he recounts in Chance and
Change. But as any conservationist would point out, entrepreneurs could
exploit his argument to remove a valuable species, rather than protect a
vulnerable one. Unfortunately, Drury ignored cash-motivated human intervention,
claiming that: 鈥淗uman effects may alter, but they do not necessarily harm, a
natural system, nor do they necessarily change the system more than do other
primary or keystone species.鈥�
So, has Drury鈥檚 approach been accepted? Of course, there are as many ways of
thinking about ecological management as there are members of the gull and tern
family. But a look at the work of Britain鈥檚 million-member bird charity, the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, proves that interventionist
management to assist bird populations at risk is the norm these days, in Britain
at any rate. Thus some of Drury鈥檚 fiercest criticism of 鈥渓aissez-faire
protection鈥�, which he felt cannot protect desired species, is rendered
invalid.
Admittedly some conservationists do have a siege mentality, resisting change,
but this is more because they have seen the damage that economic and legal
systems can do to habitats than because of any deeply held, romantic view about
nature knowing best.
Drury did have the gift of making complex theories simple鈥攁 blessing
for amateur ecologists reading his book. He also helped to lighten the
complexities of ecological theory with his pen-and-ink drawings of birds and
plants. However, owing to his illness and death in 1992, the editing from the
College of the Atlantic, in Maine, betrays the hand of too many professional
biologists. For example, the book would have been better with a glossary. There
is an appendix, but this seems an excuse to give the Latin names for a range of
American birds and beasties.
The main problem is that Drury鈥檚 criticisms of deterministic ecology, which
has led to 鈥渨ilderness鈥� being thought of as places 鈥渦ntrammelled鈥� by humans and
which encourages people to feel that 鈥渉umans and nature cannot co-exist鈥� have,
perhaps, not been so widely adopted in as crowded a country as Britain. But as
most examples in Chance and Change are limited to a tiny corner of the
island-peppered east coast of the US, it is no surprise that not all his barbs
hit their target.